"For serious tho, I’m very curious to know what constitutes hipsterism —
for Simon and for others — at this moment in time. What makes a hipster
a hipster? What value does the term retain if we begin playing fast and
loose with it, if we begin labeling a rather wide variety of practices
and perspectves as hipster-ish?"

Yesterday, Stereogum set the blogosphere and Radiohead fan base abuzz with OKX: A Tribute to OK Computer, a humble attempt by musicians such as Mobius Band, Cold War Kids and Marissa Nadler to pay homage to a seminal ten-year-old album (this generation’s Dark Side of the Moon, according to some people).

Between reading Cam's rhyme book and listening to new Avril, Hillary, Trent, and Arctic Monkeys -- don't even get us started on that Amerie joint and the Bjork/Timbo collabo -- we haven't had much time to blog.

We recommend the following fine remedial material, blowing up a summertime near you soon:

We wondered how long it was gonna take before someone raised a stink about this year's Pazz and Jop cover, in which Dylan rolls over TV on the Radio's Kyp Malone with a Segway or some shit. There are certain types of caricatures that rub you the wrong way, and this was certainly one of them.

Since leaving our fair city for the cold-hearted Rotten Apple, Cami has been blogging her face off for her new employers, the New Times/Village Voice Media empire. We don't want to get her in trouble with her new boss (same as her old boss), but for our money she's the best thing going down there. And as Boston indie-rockers are finding out, we didn't lose our favorite OTD correspondent, we've gained a couch to crash on in Brooklyn.

We've been trying to work our way out from under the avalanche of site-clogging traffic generated by our blogging bretheren over at Slop Culture, who just had the internet version of a runaway, chart-topping, Beatle-mania-type hit single. A ridiculous little idea they had called "The 100 Unsexiest Men in America" -- a parody of lad-mag "100 sexiest women" features -- became a bona-fide internet meme.

Click on the archives and you'll note that the first official On the Download post was made on April 17, 2005. We put up something about the Converge show at Harpers Ferry. None of you were reading, because we didn't tell anyone about it for a couple of months.

Matthew Herbert has long been a favorite of chin-stroking fans of what used to be called “IDM”, delivering albums based on a complex set of self-imposed rules called P.C.C.O.M Turbo Plus (incorporating the Manifesto of Mistakes) . Despite his lifetime A.V. club membership, Herbert delivered the best post-modern lounge record of all time in 2001’s Bodily Functions.

Ecstatic Peace signs deal with Universal records ECSTATIC PEACE, the independent record label founded by Sonic Youth's THURSTON MOORE in 1981 has, as of February 2006, signed a distribution deal with UNIVERSAL RECORDS.

1. "NPR FOR THE STREETS": MAD DECENT RADIO. Put "Diplo" and "podcast" in the same sentence, and we'll show you an internet traffic jam waiting to happen. Add the terms "baltimore club" and "DJ interviews" and "random bits of music you'll never hear again", and you've got a recipe for blogger/DJ pandemonium.

Big smooches to Compound 440r's MicL Ptvn for re-upping his V-day mix last night: this is what happens when discopunk and synthpop fiends google their itunes playlists for the word "love." The tracklist probably mirrors the mixtape you made for your girlfriend last week, or at least had promised you'd make, so take MicL up and pass it off as your own if you haven't already: